Just bought the game as a bundle with all the DLC. Doing my research before I start so I have an idea which way I'm going. So far, I've learned I'm descended from the Split. Everything I've seen of them makes me smile.
Hello, I'm also a brand new player, literally just started yesterday. I have posted questions on the reddit for this game and I have been told so many times to start your first play through in the terran cadet campaign. It's got the most informative start, giving you a much better teaching than any of the other starts. Take that as you will and best of luck.
I've asked plenty of people on forums to explain this to me, and nobody could explain anything, everyone just gave me their best option and that's it. No explanation as to why or how, just "Buy this, it's the best" and good luck. Thanks to this video I have a much, much better understanding of things, thank you very much!
I've been playing and doing some practical tests for turret combinations on my Syn and Asgards. At first, I also too thought M Beams were garbage, and no matter what their DPS is indeed garbage... however... after using them I did change my mind. M Beams is what I use against S ships, their damage is low, however their strength is what makes up for that. They will consistent hit them and keep S fighters from regenerating their shields as long as they are within range. M Beams used with L Pulse is an extremely deadly combination against S Ships. I've tried M Pulses to do the same job to keep their shields low, however, even with their fast 1.8km/s speed projectile will consistently miss against most S ship unless they are going in for an attack run. Because of all the missed M Pulse projectiles-- they also do garbage damage, so I will take the turret that can at least keep S Ship shields from regenerating consistently.
My main ship is a Dragon with 6 beams and 2 beam turrets. The damage is low but the targets can be hit instantly. You almost never miss. Mod the weapons and you've got a ship that can quickly mow down xenons.
Yeah, for similar reasons in my new save (it's still rather young) I'm thinking about going back to Pulse Lasers, the damage of the chain gun is better, but the projectile speed so low, that Xenon Fighers regularly just go into evasion mode where they only fly in circles and my guns just have a very hard time actually hitting them.
I also think that beam turrets are getting heavily underestimated. I tried plasma L and pulse M on my rattlesnake. It takes ages until they shoot down a Xenon M or N, let alone the station defense drones. They might hit, when you're standing still, but that's not the way I fly my rattlesnake... I roll and sometimes turn so my thrusters and turrets don't get damaged/destroyed by the enemy. Since I got my M beams and L plasma on the Rattlesnake, I'm really happy with it. If I want to destroy a Xenon station and the station starts like 40+ defense drones, i just roll and chill, plasma turrets and main weapons take care of the station and the M beams shoot down the annoying drones one by one... Just keep an eye out for Xenon I, K and multiple P. Beam turrets may look weak if you look at the numbers, but at least they HIT and DO ACTUAL DAMAGE, even to small targets. I would say that in a typical fight scenario, where you don't stand still and actively destroy stations and M/L/XL ships, beams do at least double the damage overall to these annoying S ships and drones compared to pulse, flak and bolt. At least that's what I experienced.
Beams are purely for IS combat. OOS they are total trash. That means in the early game when everything is IS, they can fill a role. Mid-game and beyond when most of your combat is OOS, drop them entirely.
@@FlorpIncarnate I've been playing this game for a long time and I don't know what Out Of System is (Is it the Xenon Sectors?)... Can you point me to an article or something that explains the differences? I looked for one on the subject and could not find it. Thank you!
Thank you for the guide! I have seen a lot of guides through the years but this was so on point and well illustrated but still letting me think for myself. Great stuff 😊🤩
Awesome vid. seems i have the knowledge to create whatever fleet i need now. Station destroyer fleet, max range. Fleet destroyer fleet, good combo of very fast weapons for smaller ships, and high damage weapons for larger ships. All around fleet - large ships designed for destroying stations, with lots of medium and small ships for dealing with the smaller stuff. making sure to leave behind your weaker ships when attacking high risk targets. Your videos are great, really concise and easy to understand.
As usual, a joy to watch. If you doing a no-numbers chart to compare parts it would be wise to put them on one screen, so we can actually compare them. A quick reference summary card at the end, with best uses for every part would also be great.
I wish I could give this 5 thumbs up, really. Your content is great and I hope you enjoy producing it and will keep producing, because I sure as hell enjoy watching it and will continue to do so!
Another great video. I always wondered why the turrets were barely diversified across the races. Unique weapon stats are fun and add flavor to the game. Strange choice by the devs.
Your x4 guides are the best. Id love you to make a “setting up your first silica station for extreme dummies” vid I think I had to watch your current station vid about 5 times to really grasp it. Regardless THANKYOU
Did some testing in my own game and got interesting results. For medium ships I bought 15 Baldrics and outfitted one each with a mk3 engine of each type and species. So I had one all round, one combat, and one travel from each species. Then I queued up 6 move orders outlining the edge of one of the sectors and then back to the start. This simulates having to stop and dock, not just a sprint or straight line race. I stayed out of the sector for the whole test. The first one to complete all the orders was the Argon Mk3 travel drive. Not unexpected. 2nd place went to the Split mk3 travel. Then came Teladi travel in third and then Paranid travel in 4th. In fifth place, with a wide gap between 4th and 5th, was the Terran all round mk3, not their travel drive. In 6th, again with a big gap, was the Split Combat drive Mk3. I wanted to stay with all mk3s, but this result makes me want to try the mk4. 7th right behind it was the Argon all round mk3. Then a great big gap. 8th was the Terran Travel drive, apparently they suck for medium ships. The rest were grouped up, with the Terran combat drive bringing up the rear. For large ships I got 5 Okinawas, one with each species' travel drive. Then I queued up a ring of 6 move orders just like the medium ship test. I stayed out of sector for this one too. In first was the Paranid with the Argon close behind. In third place with a small gap was the Teladi. Then there was a big gap and the Split. Then another even bigger gap and the Terran was bringing up the rear. I do have a mod that doubles large ship cargo capacity, but these were empty so it shouldn't affect the results. I don't even know if the game simulates full cargo or not. Also I didn't do these in an empty sector, it's possible the police stopped and scanned a ship or something while I wasn't watching. Being in sector might make the results different, but since most things are out of sector most of the time I don't think it's worth testing that for traders. Obviously more testing is needed to ensure these results hold up, but they are interesting. The Terrans seem to have terrible engines.
Okay, the info is great, but I mostly wanted to say how cool that all beam turret footage looked. Too bad mounting four of them on my Cerberus wouldn't be effective.
Hey man I'm new to this game totally. I first played a little x3 like 2005? I bought rebirth but never played. I bought x4 in 2018 never played until now. I don't like that the game had 1000 bugs to fix in 4 years. How were people enjoying it before? Anyway I am loving it and love your videos. Their funny, informative and well displayed. Precise to the point and easy. Please keep making them!
@JKNinja can u post a guide video about Large and XLarge ships? Only your guide about X4 is simple and understandable comparing to other guides. we want to know about Each capital ships with your explaining guide video.
Thanks for the clear concise presentation. Really appreciate all the editing and little sparks of humor in there too. Like the others are saying, a joy to watch. 😀
Greetings! I am a Russian-speaking player and these days I have searched through a bunch of Russian streamers, players, forums and other things in search of adequate information. And then I came across this video! Oh my God! Thank you very much! Even with my disgusting knowledge of English (thanks to RU-vid subtitles) this video helped me a lot!
Beam turrets ... anti missile defence, thats literally it i always do Mas anti fighter, and large as anti capship ... though with ToA it may have to change a little, but this was helpfull as i always forget to check the differences of the turrets myself when buying
Good Sir, your guides are the best X4 guides out there. Are you planning to do other ones such as large ships etc? Would love to learn about fleet compositions and things like that which would suit your layout of guides perfectly. Thanks for your hard work, really appreciated.
@@JKNinja hehe no pressure from me! I'm just happy you're thinking about more vids. As I said, they are the best X4 guides out there imo. Looking forward to them when you get round to it!
I love your video's and the way you put time into them with all the graph's/animation's, I've been trying to do some RU-vid video's myself and was wondering what kind of editor you use?
So for medium turrets on ships you want mostly Argon flak for medium and Paranid plasma for large? Does this hold up in sector and out of sector? Or is there a best in slot for out of sector turrets? For stations would the Paranid's range be worth their otherwise lesser stats? Is a large station based Paranid plasma going to out range a destroyer's main gun enough to matter? How about lasers for missile defense? Love how deep this game is :) Does mixing shields work, or is it the worst of both? For example on a two-shield ship does putting Teladi for capacity alongside Paranid for regen just average out to a pair of Argons, or is it better/worse? I disable the highway in most of my games, that makes travel drives more important. I have been putting MkII Argon travel drives on everything as they seemed like best bang for the buck, but you made it sound like for L and XL ships the Teladi might be better for combat/all around. That large engine test video you linked showed Terran travel are best, thanks for that. For my M miners and traders are the Argon the best in slot for travel, or would Terran be better? On paper the Argon look best, but I guess it needs testing. How about a video on the best ship modifications for engines and weapons? For engines I'm torn between forward thrust and travel speed. For hull I almost always do the mass reduction since I pretty much only mod the ships I fly and I like maneuverable ships, but the choices for hull seem more 'exactly what it says on the tin'. I generally use obliterator for weapons, and a mix of targe and pavise for shields, but not sure if that's best. Possible content for you and stuff to play with in my own games, thanks :)
Flaks are great to light the sky on fire using "attack fighters", but if you have several ships in the fight there's a chance of friendly fire. I use that configuration for Destroyers. For M ships I only use flaks in the ship I'm flying, the rest gets pulse turrets and "attack my target", because otherwise the turret will just be spinning going from target to target. Never use "attack my target" or "attack any enemy" for M turrets on destroyers, because the AI will try to get in range to use them, and if you're bombarding a station then you're tost. Unless they are dumbfire turrets, of course.
While in game the tel turrets don't work that well their stats do fit with their theme. Since they are pretty much only strapping these onto merchant fleets the goal isn't to destroy the enemy but to buy enough time to get away. With a high range and high ROF they would achieve that
Is the terran boost to destroyers a hidden bonus? I just changed my engines from my osaka from travel mk2 to all round mk2 argon engines and the argon engines are faster. Awesome video love the info!!!
After some tests, I found out that, while argon engines indeed have a higher top speed, on travel mode teladi engines have much better acceleration and reach their top speed much sooner. So much so that a ship equiped with an argon engine will only take over an equivalent ship with anologous teladi engine after a good long distance. These results held for engines of all types and sizes. Therefore, for trading in short-to-medium distances, or with the help of a highway, teladi engines should be the most efficient choice.
Turrets in this game, like all of the X games I've been playing for 15 years, are something I've always hated. Egosoft can just never get it right. I'm only using M beam turrets now in foundations, because despite how pathetically weak they are they kill things faster than anything else because nothing else can still hardly even hit targets. Flak is the best, but all they do is constantly hit your allies, turning them hostile and losing you reputation when you're forced to kill them. It's extremely frustrating.
A focused Consideration: Shielding on large Ships, does individual shield generators need to be taken out to get at the weapons on that area of the ship?
Does a laser turret help knocking enemy ships out of travel mode? I've seen some Ses bypass my blockades and wonder if one might help. I doubt you'd ever want more than one (maybe one per section in a turret heavy defense platform) for that though.
so this was pre-boron, right? something of interest is that the borons actually have only one engine type (that I know of), and it acts like a combat engine on smaller ships, with an instant spool up time. I don't know how the stats compare to the other races and if it works the same on the larger ships, but its interesting at least.
I personally suck at even the easiest of pew pew. Thus avoid the majority of story lines in the game. All my ships regardless have combat mods, thus if and when I get envolved in a situation I dislike, even if I deliberatly caused it myself, meaning I bite off more than I could chew. Having the ability to get when the getting is still available is my thing to do.
The thing with Beam weapons though is that they slowdown the enemy (not sure if both M and L turrets do this cause who tf uses L Beam turrets lmao) but im pretty sure boh M and L do. Also their travel time is instant therefor almost always hitting your target. Also a thing to mention is in sector and out of sector. because OOS combat is calculated differently with turrets etc. but you just go down the rabbit hole at that point lmao. You also forgot the Missile turrets, not sure if there actually is a difference in them but theyre there I guess (also noticed the Terrans love to use them for some reason, in my game theres a bunch of Tokyo's that are missile barges and its beautiful)
I do like that factions are just color of the shot and stat modifiers. Other games come up with "unique" gun names, which just makes keeping them straight in your head, a pain in the butt. If I want smol and accurate and balanced, pulse and then pick my flavor, if I want accuracy and death by volume, beams and a Split carrier or a Syn with LARGE beams, oh, so sorry for your drones Xenon, would you like a side of missing shipyard to go with them? If only I didn't hate the sound of terran main batteries. They squeak, like metal on metal, why? I do like Split Plasma, but I went with Paranid anyway, maybe Argon plasma Ls? IDK Are TER Pulse Ls even useful compared to Bolt?
just been watching you video and had a thought, ie shields and gun Mix like terran shields and say Paranid shield how would that work same with flak guns for kinetic and laser for shields what mix would you say would be the best.
I've always used the same shields when outfitting a ship, never thought to mix and match. Racial shields don't have any inherent resistances compared to each other so it using Terran and Paranid shields on the same ship should just give you a blend of stats.
Many times I have heard the opinion that beam turrets sucks, but I wonder what they are for? They are not the cheapest and are one of only three available L turrets. Isn't it that they are for shooting down missiles?
From what I've seen it's just flak turrets absolutely melt things while everything else gently tickles. I watched an entire screen of red small and medium xenon ships come at my lonely behemoth with just flaks for m and pulse for L turrets, and of course the main guns are pretty useless in dog fights. I made about 5 million in about 8 minutes just killing their ships sitting afk as my flak turrets destroyed everything they killed a single turret and crews brought it back online to finish. But I had a fleet of 3 destroyers with all pulses have trouble clearing out similar counts, flak only for me on literally every ship. Sad because I like the looks of variety
The beams have garbage damage to balance the fact that they actually hit. Everything else misses 90% of the shots, which kind of reduces the overall *actual* damage done to small ships. Right? So for specifically hitting small ships, beams seem like they might be the best option...?
Im ripping my hair out to understand if i can make weapons or not. I want to make "SPL S Thermal Disintegrator". Is it even possible? Im toying with the station builder and it does make weapon components, but i dont understand how to make the actual weapons
Weapons are built with the ship at a wharf or shipyard. Weapon components are used to complete the order, but you can't make the weapons individually and store them for later use
@@JKNinja Ah. No more ripping hair. Thanks for the answer! But can i, as i mass produce ships choose any weapons i have access to? Or only basic stuff? What if im best pals with the Split? Or do i have to send my fleets to Split wharfs for upgrades?